The Money Train That Is Sports TV

ENLARGE

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich
El Nuevo Herald/Associated Press

By

Jason Gay

Updated Dec. 4, 2012 9:10 p.m. ET

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is not everyone's barrel of fun but I like him because he's impish and honest, and the other day he said an obvious but rather extraordinary thing. He was talking about the recent controversy involving the NBA and the San Antonio Spurs, and he opined that the league was correct to fine the Spurs $250,000 for not playing their best players in a nationally televised game versus Miami last week. Cuban said he didn't really have a problem with the Spurs sitting their aging talent—they have done it before—but suggested they should have picked another game, and not one scheduled for a big telecast on TNT.

"My opinion is, if it wasn't a Thursday night TV game, nothing would have happened," Cuban said, according to the Dallas Morning News. He later added: "Rest your starters for the long haul? One game earlier, one game later? Sure. Rest them when you've got our biggest customer at stake, that's a whole different animal."

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Cuban. I know it seems silly to praise someone for acknowledging the plain-sight relationship between a sports league and television, but that relationship is seldom characterized in such a collaborative manner, especially as far as game action is concerned. Cuban probably thought he was just stating a fact—and he was stating a fact—but it was valuable to hear it out loud.

Because television does rule sports, like never before. Not a month seems to pass in which there's not some new TV contract announced for a professional or college sports league, and the figures are astonishing—billions of dollars, piled high over years, sometimes decades. Last year at this time, the NFL reached new agreements with Fox, CBS and NBC that totaled $27.9 billion. Even regional leagues and single teams can command huge figures, sometimes into the billions for one franchise alone. The Los Angeles Times reported late last month that Fox and the Los Angeles Dodgers were closing in on a deal valued around $6 billion. (Fox is a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.)

These megadeals are not breaking news. This is the accepted reality. Television is the driver behind the comical conference-hopping that is rearranging the geography of college sports, as the map is redrawn and San Diego State and Boise State are welcomed into something that still calls itself, with no irony, the Big East. It is behind Maryland's move to the Big Ten and Louisville's escape to the ACC. It is why the BCS championship occurs on Monday prime time in early January, not the calm of New Year's Day. Television is at the heart of the coming BCS playoff—the Journal's Rachel Bachman reported that ESPN's deal for the new format is worth about $470 million annually.

These are flabbergasting amounts of money, and it only makes sense that it elevates the partners who are writing the checks. That's what Cuban meant when he called TV "the driver for all things financial in sports. Period, end of story. We are not 10 years ago where TV is just another source of income. That is the money train. Period, end of story, no questions asked."

The Money Train is what the San Antonio Spurs ran up against when they decided to rest the aging Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili versus Miami. Sure, you can have the distraction arguments—the Spurs rest their seniors all the time; they'd already played a tough stretch of games that week; the NBA schedule is too long and intense. You can accept Stern's vague statement that the Spurs' Day Off was "contrary to the best interests of the NBA" and a "disservice to the league and our fans."

Or you can just cut to the chase with Cuban: This was about TV. That doesn't mean the NBA's fine of San Antonio wasn't completely over the top, or doesn't provoke troubling questions (should TV relationships be valued over player relationships?). But it is to confront a reality that sports is still prissy about: that games are entertainment, and entertainment is what the networks pay top dollar for. It is to embrace the obvious. The Spurs made a perfectly defensible choice that crossed a bright modern line. You can love it or hate it. But don't look to the basketball court for an explanation. Look at the screen in your living room.

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